Romney clinches GOP presidential nomination
Republican presidential candidate, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney arrives for a campaign event at the Somers Furniture warehouse Tuesday, May 29, 2012 in Las Vegas.
/ AP Photo/Mary Altaffer(CBS News) Nearly a year after announcing his presidential bid, CBS News estimates that Mitt Romney has earned the necessary delegates to clinch the Republican presidential nomination.
With 91 percent of the votes counted, the former Massachusetts governor sailed to victory in Tuesday's Texas GOP primary, earning 69 percent of the vote and surpassing the 1,144 delegates needed to secure the nomination. Texas Rep. Ron Paul, who announced earlier this month that he would no longer be actively campaigning in the race, earned 11 percent.
CBS News has been tracking delegates throughout the primaries and caucuses, including interviews with Republican delegates across the country. The former Massachusetts governor has amassed more than a thousand delegates from these contests and CBS News has also confirmed that he has the support of 83 of the 123 delegates who are Republican National Committee members and are free to support who they choose.
According to CBS News estimates, Romney will have 1,198 delegates following his victory in Texas.
Texas primary results
CBS News estimated delegate count
Full primary campaign results
In a statement after the Texas polls closed, Romney said he was "humbled to have won enough delegates to become the Republican Party's 2012 presidential nominee."
"Our party has come together with the goal of putting the failures of the last three and a half years behind us," Romney said in the statement. "On November 6, I am confident that we will unite as a country and begin the hard work of fulfilling the American promise and restoring our country to greatness."
Republican National Committee chair Reince Priebus congratulated the presumptive nominee on reaching the 1,144 delegate marker, and expressed confidence that "Romney will offer America the new direction we so desperately need."
"We cannot afford four more years of President Obama's big government agenda, deficit spending, and attacks on American free enterprise," Priebus said in a Tuesday night statement. "At a time when the country must empower the private sector to create jobs, we need a leader who actually understands job creation and respects the private sector. That leader is Mitt Romney."
In the year since announcing his candidacy, Romney has won 31 states en route to the nomination. It was a long battle partially due to new Republican party rules, as a result of which more states awarded delegates proportionally, making it more difficult for Romney -- or any candidate -- to wrap the nomination up early.
Paul, who continues to focus on winning delegates at state and district conventions, now has 121 total delegates, according to CBS News estimates.
Former candidates Newt Gingrich and Rick Santorum also won a number of delegates during their presidential campaigns. While both have publicly endorsed Romney, they have yet to release their delegates, which means many of these delegates remain bound to Gingrich and Santorum -- at least for now.
When asked Tuesday when he expected to officially release his delegates, Gingrich said he wasn't yet sure.
"When it's appropriate. I don't know yet," he told reporters.
Romney will officially be nominated at the Republican national convention in August in Tampa, Florida.
Popular in Politics
- Obama prom pictures surface
- Obama: America at a "crossroads" in fighting terrorism
- IRS official Lois Lerner placed on leave
- Drones, Gitmo part of broad Obama counterterrorism speech
- Lawmakers push to punish sexual offenders in the military
- Protester heckles Obama during counterterrorism speech Play Video
- Boehner calls out Obama administration's "arrogance of power" 88 Comments
- IRS' Lerner: "I have not done anything wrong" 965 Comments
The delegate count as of today is:
Speaker Gingrich - 66;
Representative Paul - 186;
Governor Romney - 591;
Senator Santorum - 146;
still to be allocated - 1297.
Romney doesn't yet (if he ever will) have the requisite number of delegates. Romney is not the only one still actively campaigning.
Not to mention he and his vulture capitalist cronies will do everything they can to privatize Social Security and Medicare and put the money in the hands of Wall Street pirates.
Speaker Gingrich - 66;
Representative Paul - 186;
Governor Romney - 591;
Senator Santorum - 146;
still to be allocated - 1297.
Romney doesn't yet (if he ever will) have the requisite number of delegates. Romney is not the only one still actively campaigning.
So we have a funeral for America now or should we wait until Wall Street buys him into office like they do the rest of the Republicons.
If that is even close to being true, how come willard romney has only been paying 13.8% on his 22 million in income the past 2 years, and currently doesn't want to release his 2011 taxes until it's too late?
GO FISH, fox/rush parrot!
... Even is Obama is was born here, he still is not American. Obama hates America.
---------------------------
Now that makes a LOT of sense. And exactly what has Obama done to show he "hates America"?
Both parties have sold out the bulk of the American citizens, who they're supposed to represent, by allowing the "out-sourcing" floodgates to open wider and wider without taking any sensible measures to stem the tide. (Under Clinton jobs to China, Under Bush I & II influx of illegals or cheap easily abused labor into the US and jobs to Mexico/NAFTA) Our leaders are elected by the Citizens of the United States of America to represent the interests of those citizens and the country itself. They are NOT elected by the Global Market Place or foreign citizens!
All this single-minded, left versus right, ideological one dimensional bull has got to go! This is the problem with our country. It shouldn't be about Democrats or Republicans! It should be about Americans, especially our elected officials, doing the right thing for our country and it's citizens.
We need to bring manufacturing back to the United States of America and both parties are ignoring tariffs as a way to level the playing field, raise money and bring jobs back home. Let's guess why. Oh that's right, tariff is a dirty word. Hum, maybe it's that our so called leaders (political leaders) are beholden to the same people who are exporting our jobs.
I guess we should keep letting Corp Boards, Wall Street, CEOs and Foreign Lobbyists promote sending US jobs to countries where they work for slave wages, no benefits, no OSHA safety standards or no real environment regulations. How's that been working for us?
The so called "Global Market Place" is not a level playing field. Companies may have made higher profits by "out sourcing", but they've been putting middle class Americans who are a good part of the world's customer base out of work. I'm not a lefty or member of any union. I run a business that employs over 20 people and produces products that are purchased by customers that do manufacturing and packaging. I'm just an average Joe, but I've been saying this for more than 10 years now. If I can see it, so can our so called leaders (political leaders) who are beholden to the same people who are exporting our jobs.
We need to add tariffs that are proportionate to the inequities in wages and regulations in the country where the goods were produced and or where we're importing them from. We could then use the money raised by these tariffs to help companies build state of the art manufacturing plants here in the USA, which would create more jobs here at home for US citizens, which would then in turn increase our income tax revenue.
Bringing manufacturing back to the US not only gives jobs to the US citizens who would be working in those manufacturing facilities, but to the people that would be working in the businesses that would spring up all around them. This should also include the safe harvesting, production and distribution of our own natural energy here in the USA, rather than paying for fuel from countries where they hate us. Let's keep that money and those jobs here in the US.
These so-called "free trade agreements" have to go. It was obvious when they were passing these agreements as to what was going to happen and sure enough it did. Our leaders had to have known this as well when they were passing these bills. It's just common sense. We also need to bring customer support services back to the United States of America and staff them with employees who are US Citizens.
The "Global Market Place" is not a level playing field! The whole idea of the tariffs is so we can pay our factory workers a decent wage and not be blown out by these other countries where they don't play by the same rules.
We may have to pay a bit more for products made here in the USA by US citizens, but at least we'll still have jobs and a future for our children.
The bottom line is that "Our Government" has to protect American industry and the jobs that those industries provide. If they do that, the rest will take care of itself.
Sorry danny boy, but your ridiculous and unfounded accusations against older retirees and the working poor that have always paid a higher percentage of their paychecks in payroll taxes than even the wealthy in the top 1%, prove that it is the fox/rush parrots are the ones that hate most Americans in their most unchristianlike way!
The information you report is false.
To get a much more accurate status of the nomination process, see TheGreenPapers.com. This site gives the actual process where the GOP nominee is selected.
Romney is far from winning the nomination of the GOP party. In fact, as delegates are actually being selected in state meeting, Ron Paul continues to close the gap. The beauty contest public votes in most states do not reflect delegate counts needed to gain the nomination. Shame on you.